Pimax today announced they’ve headed into the mass production phase of the Pimax “8K” VR headset.

“The obstacles that prevent us from mass production have been eliminated last week, thus the whole project now can move on with full speed towards Kickstarter delivery,” the company writes in an update. Pimax wasn’t specific on the exact problems preventing mass production, citing “hardware bottlenecks” which made the entire team wait until recently. One known complication however was a lens design issue that supposedly delayed the M1 pre-production unit a number of months, pushing it from its expected February shipping date to the end of May.

Pimax says the M1 pre-production version of the “8K” headset, which was handed out to nine hand-picked beta testers, has given the company “lots of valuable feedback” and helped the company “to address the issues related to user experience in general, the vast subset of physical features, and user habits in different countries/regions.”

Pimax “8K” V5 prototype | Photo by Road to VR

The update provided some new information on changes coming to the final production version; Pimax “8K” will arrive with the option to either display at 200 degrees or 170 degrees FOV, something Pimax says you can pick before launching an app based on your preference and graphics cards capability.

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The timeline to backer delivery has been stretched somewhat as well by the inclusion of SteamVR 2.0 tracking sensors, both in the headset itself and the ‘Knuckles’ style Pimax controller. The company says they’ll be providing two SteamVR basestations, although it’s uncertain from the update if these are 1.0 or 2.0 basestations (2.0 sensors are backwards compatible, 2.0 basestations aren’t). The company hasn’t given any estimations for delivery this time around.

Image courtesy Pimax

Pimax is also creating a business version, which they say will eventually be available, and differently colored to distinguish it from the consumer version.

If you haven’t been following along with Pimax’s Kickstarter, you may have noticed we’ve been putting “8K” in quotes. This is done to indicate that the 8K name is just that, a name that doesn’t reflect the specs of the headset. The headset integrates dual 3840×2160 low-persistence LCD panels, so not 8K by any stretch. In our CES 2018 hands-on with the recent prototype (before M1), the headset did however boast an extremely wide field of view that at times seemed very promising. We’re hoping the kinks have all been worked out, as it’ll be the first wide FOV headset available on the consumer market.

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Scott Hayden
Well before the first modern XR products hit the market, Scott recognized the potential of the technology and set out to understand and document its growth. He has been professionally reporting on the space for nearly a decade as Editor at Road to VR, authoring more than 3,500 articles on the topic. Scott brings that seasoned insight to his reporting from major industry events across the globe.
  • Martin Petersson

    Can’t wait!

  • ale bro

    now i’m excited!!

  • JJ

    “If you haven’t been following along with Pimax’s Kickstarter, you may have noticed we’ve been putting “8K” in quotes. This is done to indicate that the 8K name is just that, a name that doesn’t reflect the specs of the headset. The headset integrates dual 3840×2160 low-persistence LCD panels, so not 8K by any stretch.”

    Heck yes Road to vr! I’m excited to see you’re transparency on the “8K’ title!! Everbodys been getting this wrong so it’s great hearing it from an official source.

    • NooYawker

      They had to clarify because a bunch of people keep getting their panties in a bunch because of the quotes.

      • JJ

        yeah because without the quotes everyone thinks its 8K and its not. which was pimaxs intention, so this provides a definite answer to those that don’t understand that 2 4K monitors does not equal 8k and who were debating.

        • G-man

          it is, 8k is a width, get over it.

          • I don’t think anyone has looked at the actual DP 1.4 bit-stream (or have not published it) and from my understanding they are not running an 8K stream, but two interleaved 4K frames at 144 fps with DSC so it could be run over one DP port. Even then, you are still looking at a whopping 31.5 Gbps requiring stringent cabling requirements.

          • G-man

            if youre talking about the pimax 8k, then its not sending an 8k signal, or even a 4k, it’s two 1440p signals. the 8kx headset that actually uses the full panel resolution will have two dp cables.

          • Twa Corbies

            Sorry, wrong post

          • Twa Corbies

            “it is, 8k is a width, get over it.”
            Yeah, so if i make monitor 100 pixels high, i can still call it 8k as long, as i make it 7680 pixel wide… sounds reasonably. rofl

          • G-man

            yes, because its a pixel width standard. you could make it one pixel high if you like, it’s still 8k

          • Twa Corbies

            “yes, because its a pixel width standard. you could make it one pixel high if you like, it’s still 8k”
            And you don’t see anything wrong with it? You’re definitely good material for PR shithead

          • G-man

            no, i dont. its a simple concept to understand, width not resolution. if you feel like vr headset resolutions are too complicated when they describe them with overall pixel width, individual eye resolution, total resolution. every detail you could ever possibly need. if you cant understand what resolution a headset is then you’ve got more problems than worrying about the name of a vr headset

        • Heliosurge

          Well it is an 8k resolution. Just not 8k TV Resolution. 8k Ultrawide or 2160p Ultrawide (32:9). However the TV industry corrupted tge pre existing standard as 3840 is not 4k. 4k would actually either be 4000 or by computer standard 4096. Hard drive manufacturers years ago lost in court about using 1000 as 1meg and now stipulate how they calculate drive sizes.

    • Andrew Jakobs

      what ‘official source’? It’s always been clear that it had 2 3840×2160 displays, and guess what 2 x 3840 is exactly what 8K is (technically 8K only refers to the horizontal resolution. just like 4K, “4K UHD” makes it 3840×2160.

      • If we use your logic, which I have talked about before, the specification would be 7680 x 4320. So I follow the camp that says we need to identify the screen size regardless if there is one or two and just identify there are two. The aspect ratio is much different for this HMD than anything else on the market.

      • Aaron

        I always assumed it was the number of pixels divided by 1000. Looks like 8K to me.

    • brandon9271

      Two 4k panels definitely IS NOT 8k and on top of that its per eye resolution that actually matters because your brains sums the left and right images together. I can’t believe people are still debating this so many years later.

      • Behind you on this Brandon. In fact I don’t even believe you can run these in an extended horizontal mode to prove that the horizontal resolution is 7680 without some programming. You literally have two panels showing the same scene with an offset.

        • brandon9271

          Showing the same scene.. you mean not in stereo? That would be horrible

      • Heliosurge

        4k uhd panels are not actually true 4k. Read Article below as it explains the difference if UHD & 4k.

        http://www.planar.com/blog/2015/9/9/what-s-the-difference-between-4k-and-uhd/

        I do agree per Resolution makes more sense for the stero overlap area. In this regard Oculus/Vive/Psvr would be just slightly over 1k VR. Since we don’t call 3d TVs at twice the Resolution. But with the Pimax having 200 FoV would need to know screen percentage of peripheral to do a weird add to Stero Overlap.

  • Darren Burns

    Im an early
    backer.. Im very excited…

    • Denzil Mason

      I’d love to hear what it’s like compared to the Vive, Vive Pro or Rift.

      • Leon

        Vive with gear vr lens swap is the sharpest and brightest image I have seen though pixels are visible but not a soft, dimmer images. Just wish it were light and had a wider POV. And I can’t say anything about other Headsets due to NDA’s. Just talk about my experience with Vive with Gear VR lenses.

      • Farrison Hord

        It’s not the beta version but you can check out what Linus had to say about it on YouTube when he tried the early pre-M1 prototype. In summary, the FOV is simply amazing, beyond anything on the market right now, you actually feel as you’re in the game, not just looking at a 3D environment as it can feel like with most of the other VR headsets. The version he tried had its flaws though, it was jaggy, distorted at the edges and didn’t have optimal motion tracking(or it was lagging, making him somewhat nauseated). They have some kinks they really need to iron out(they probably have, as it’s the same flaws everyone who’s tested them has been saying, and Pimax has already addressed them in their forums. Anyway, Linus seemed really excited about it after trying them, and concluded with that we should all wait for it(not buying the Vive or Vive Pro(which is a disappointing upgrade considering the price tag).

    • J.M.Wagner

      Me too, can’t wait!

  • impurekind

    Shame it’s not real 8K, but still a pretty compelling headset all-round. I hope it lives up to the hype.

    • Sandy Wich

      If it was real 8k you’d be getting 10 fps with a 4000 dollar computer bud.

      The shame is they gave it a ridiculous name.

      • impurekind

        For now you’d be getting a lower framerate, but there’s literally nothing about 8K that will be an issue in that regard in a handful of years time. So I’d still like to see a headset that is truly capable of 8K and pretty future proof for a while in that regard. And there’s zero reason an 8K headset can’t also run all the games that don’t require 8K for now too.

        • Sandy Wich

          Yea but with how fast the VR hardware is moving forward, long before 8k at high framerates, “75+”, was viable we’ll see headsets that run country miles around this one.

          But It’s technically possible if a game was super cartoony and low requirements that a really high end computer may be able to play 8k 75+hz

          hmm……… Oh well, I’m just happy VR is getting better, CV1 Oculus is cute, but VR desperately needs to be better than this.

      • brandon9271

        Even if the display is 8k that doesn’t mean the gpu has to render at 8k. Even 2k would look better on an 8k display due to reduced SDE. would sort of be a waste to have the pixels and bit use them though

        • Heliosurge

          Your thinking of a Desktop Display that have advanced upscalers. VR headsets generally don’t have desktop display options like that.

          • brandon9271

            That’s true but I’m thinking of supersampling but in reverse. I don’t see why that wouldn’t be possible. We already have it in Steam VR

        • Sandy Wich

          Yea but more resolution costs more money, and it’s just brute forcing clarity while losing half of the benefit because nobody can push that resolution in engine, and by the time people can, the hardware will be extremely outdated.

          TBH Pimax is already doing this considering they are 2x 4k screens that are rendering at 1440ishp.

          ..But at least this is still within the realm of reason, right? At least small 4k screens are being made for phones, but 4k++?…

          That’ll cost a small fortune and all but guarantee Pimax wouldn’t sell numbers past the kickstarter phase and basically kill the brand overnight.

          • brandon9271

            Yeah and the problem with the pimax is, even when the GPUs catch up, you’re still stuck with a 4k display that can only display 1440p. That’s kind of crap

          • Sandy Wich

            Yea I don’t know why it’s locked software side at 1440p. I get why it comes standard with it atm, cus 2x4k at that fps isn’t realistic right now, but in a few years it may be… Someone might still have a Pimax headset by then…

            Oh well, I’m no engineer. Must be something though because their X version does that exact thing. AKA run at true 2x4k.

          • brandon9271

            If you read further down in the thread, ‘All Things 3D’ mentioned that the circuitry used to drive the display panels doesn’t have the bandwidth to drive them at their native resolution. Not sure their reason for doing this. Either to cut costs or because they didn’t feel it was necessary. Personally, its enough to make me not buy one, among other reasons.

          • Sandy Wich

            Dunno if I’ll buy one yet, waiting for real reviews from people i can trust

    • Heliosurge

      If it was full 8k UHD & not 1/2 height 8k. The aspect Ratio would be 16:9 giving it a FoV more like OculusVivePsvr (Psvr more so if single panel). So no advance Ultra FoV.

      • impurekind

        I’m just talking about it being proper 8K in terms of resolution (PPI or whatever it’s called), not in terms of screen ratio.

        • Heliosurge

          Proper 8k resolution is 1:1 at 8196*8196. Now improper 8k UHD tv res is 7680*4320. Cinema & photography standards for 8k predates TV resolution. It’s also why 1080p was never called 2k.

          It wasn’t until UHD that they started the misnomer calling 4x 1080p 4k.

          • impurekind

            Yeah, I was a bit annoyed when the started calling them all numbers that weren’t genuinely true to what they were actually displaying.

      • Farrison Hord

        I agree that they should have called them something else than “8K”, maybe even focus more on the impressive FOV but no one is really looking to buy these without checking the actual specs, as you’d have to be above average interested to have even heard about them. I can 100% look past the name and focus on the end result, which will hopefully be an impressive one.

  • NooYawker

    That knuckle controller looks very cool.

    • alboradasa

      Yeah I wonder how they came up with that idea

      • NooYawker

        Everyone’s going to be copying each other, that’s how it goes.

  • PJ

    Bought the original, there is NO chance in HELL im buying another awful product of Pimax EVER again. The screen itsself was lovely, it really was, but the build quality was awful, i have bought many products from China and Korea over the years from TV’s, Monitors to Phones and tablets, with different degrees of success/failure, but the Pimax, oh my god that was truly awful…you may of picked up on my usage of ‘was’ well, it literally fell apart 2 months after it arrived…yeah, it was that good..

    • I had a similar experience. I also took mine apart and saw they had removed the part number off their HDMI-MIPI chip. As you know, many were upset that the could not use their HMD at 4K past 30 fps. Pimax led you to believe this was a software issue, but I called them out on it that is was due to their HDMI-MIPI chip being only capable of HDMI 1.4, which is only rated for 4K 30 fps max. Funny that we are seeing similar fps promises, yet this is not bearing out in the real world. My projection is you won’t see past 75 fps with “8K” and only if you have TWO beefy graphics cards since again they are building this with a Displayport 1.4 compatible chip (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort) I am also wondering how they plan to get past the 2m cable length as well.

      • Heliosurge

        The 4k model could have output 4k at 60hz *if* Nvidia & Amd had supported dsc like Arm processors do(Android).

        • This has nothing to do with NVIDIA or AMD. The HDMI->MIPI chip they chose to use did not support past 1.4. This is verifiable in HDMI handshake protocol. In fact I have tested the Pimax “4K” with a GTX 1070 that supports HDMI 2.0 as well as DisplayPort 1.4 and it still won’t support more than 30fps at 3840 x 2160. Now of course they may have updated the chip since I bought mine in 2016. If you are interested, I can provide you a raw data stream since I saved the board and LCD panel and can still hook it up (I salvaged the great lenses though to adapt them to my HTC/Vive Pro).

          Also, if you it should be noted that they had a slew of problems with their IMU drifting. Sadly I can’t remember the chip they used, but this was a notable problem as well.

          What does this have to do with the ARM processors? The ARM part of the chip does not handle graphics. Qualcomm uses the Adreno graphic architecture & Samsung Exnos uses Mali graphics architecture, and NVIDIA uses a Maxwell graphics subset in their TX1 which does support HDMI 2.0 as seen in their Shield TV. The TX2 supports the Pascal graphics architecture.

          • Heliosurge

            Arm Processors with Mali do. Amd & Nvidia only recently started to support dsc compression.

            There was a lot of discussions in the closed Vr committee on 4k 30hz compressed with dsc but due to Nvidia & Amd not supporting it was not possible. This was also discussed in the main forum. The sharp panel that was also used in the Sony Xperia 5 was doing 60hz with DSC compression. But I can understand if you were not upto speed on things. Android had DSC compression (opensource) where the big guys didn’t support it & that was why they couldn’t unlock 4k 60hz compressed.

          • Yes I understand that, and understand that it was a Sharp panel, but having a LCD panel that is capable of 60Hz is only half the battle. If your HDMI-MIPI chip is only capable of supporting 1.4, you will never see more than 30Hz at 4K, regardless of the panel. So saying this is the fault of NVIDIA or AMD is not really the case. It has more to do with how Qualcomm has supported their MIPI interface on the Snapdragon SOC, which was in the Sony phone with this panel.

            Unless you can show an example of Pimax “4K” supporting 4K at 60Hz, I stand by my statement that they removed the part number from their HDMI->MIPI chip because it was more than likely the Toshiba TC358870 which is the same one used by Oculus & HTC/Vive and could drive the Sharp LCD panel due to its dual link DSI design but only at 30 fps, and their caveat now is it will support 60 Hz in 2D whatever that means.

            But agree, that this phone https://www.sonymobile.com/us/products/phones/xperia-xz2-premium/ would be something to see on how well mobile VR would look. If only Google would get off their high horse on what phones support Daydream. :(

          • Heliosurge

            Yes 4k at 30hz or 4k 60hz compressed to 30hz with dsc compression. The headset could uncompress it but as I said Amd & Nvidia didn’t support the open gpu compression standard used in Android(arm) solutions.

            So it became dead in the water. Now DP 1.4 supports dsc compression but that doesn’t help GPUs on hdmi 1.4b.

    • Kev

      I tried it at CES. I have a Vive and tried the Vive Pro – while this did have rough edges it’s light-years better than anything else I’ve tried. With my Vive I have to play long enough to ignore the low resolution and the black boxes on either side of my field of view which is doable but with the Pimax I had a hard time seeing the edges and the res is vastly better.

      • If they achieve 90 fps with two 4K panels with only a single 1080 or 1180 than than this would indeed be revolutionary. Sad that they made similar claims with the “4K” unit as well. Let’s hope they have learned from past mistakes. I just didn’t want to be another Guinea Pig. The Sixense burn still hurts.

        • Kev

          I honestly couldn’t tell the refresh rate was slower and I am indeed sensitive to that sort of thing. They claim the devices sent to the testers are 80hz vs. the one I tested which was slower. It will be up to them to expose any difficulties caused by that.

          • I actually find the Oculus Go refresh pretty good so I won’t have an issue with it not reaching 90 Hz. As mentioned, I have been burned once on Kickstarter with Sixense and came away very underwhelmed with Pimax’s “4K” version, and that they intentionally tried to occlude the fact their “4K” hardware would never be able to support 4K over 30 fps by removing the part number form their HDMI->MIPI chip.

          • Kev

            I haven’t tried the pimax 4k and that behavior doesn’t sound good to me that’s for sure. But I will say that the big leap in the experience is real but at the time had issues to clean up. If they applied the right polish since january it will be the best experience out there. Btw I also have an Oculus Go that I picked up about two weeks ago and I like it.

          • Heliosurge

            Indeed. Ben was impressed by the v2 after trying out the v1 @ Jan 2017 Ces.

      • PJ

        It’s ok trying a showcase unit, but in my hand on experience with there previous headset, when it’s start mass production, I have absolutely no faith whatsoever in Pimax’s ability to produce a quality product.
        IF, Pimax pull it off I have no doubt it will sell well and become the leading the VR headset, even I would be looking at getting one, but I’m not expecting much at all.

        Looking forward to reading reviews and watching many videos on this

        • Heliosurge

          With your previous experience with a lemon 4k. I do understand where your coming from. I had similar experience with Samsung products; Starting with tge crappy Samsung Omnia WinMobile 6.0 phone. Also have a few friends with failing displays on recent phones.

          After 3 lemons; I generally avoid their products. But will likely give Samsung another try at some point.

    • Heliosurge

      All companies have a few lemons escape the factory. Samsung released an entire model of phones that had the risk of exploding. Ford had the Pinto. Etc. It just sucks when you win the lemon lottery.

  • capitanotutteame

    Road to VR review “The biggest improvement to the Vive Pro is its new displays, which have been updated to 1,440 × 1,600 per eye from 1,080 × 1,200 (Vive).That might not seem like a big change when represented that way, but if you consider the figures in Megapixels, its 2.3MP per eye vs. 1.3MP, roughly a 77% increase in the number of pixels in each eye.”
    Another review of vive pro “has a native resolution of 2880 x 1600 versus 2160 x 1200 on the original Vive”
    Pimax 8K has a display 3840 x 2160, a native resolution 7680 x 2160 and its 8.3MP per eye roughly a 360% increase in the number of pixels in each eye
    So……..
    Oculus rift and vive are 2K because they are 2160
    Vive pro and Samsung Odyssey are 3K because they are 2880
    Pimax 8K is 8K because it’s 7680

    • Mike

      It’s 8K horizontally. But it’s only half the pixels vertically as a real 8K screen. For all practical purposes, it’s an ultra-ultra-wide 4K screen.

      • Andrew Jakobs

        sigh, here we go again… technically 8K only refers to the vertical resolution.. just like you are mistaken on 4K, what you actually mean with your 4K is “4K UHD”, THAT is what makes it 3840×2160.. technically 3840×1 is also 4K..

        • NooYawker

          sigh, here we go again… it’s technically not 8k. If industry standard had a horizontal 8k horizontal only resolution they should call it “8k horizontal” 4k and 8k are actual standards. Two 4k screens does not equate an 8k screen. It’s deceptive branding plain and simple.

          I hope this comes out and does well but the branding is bullshit.

          • Kev

            Heh, funny you mention that. 8K is an actual standard that specifically includes 8k wide by 4k high as a resolution option.

          • Caven

            The screens in the Pimax aren’t 4K tall. Even if they were, the final image perceived by the viewer isn’t 8K wide, as a substantial part of the images displayed overlap.

        • Slaziar

          That would be fine if it was 8K per eye, except it’s not. If I’m looking at an 8K panel and close one eye, I still see an 8K panel, on the Pimax I’d only see 4K.

      • Kev

        Uh Who cares? It’s 400% more than a Rift and twice as wide.

  • Kudos to Scott for promoting a VR optical resolution standard.

    On that note, I really hope all the backers are happy with their headsets. Having purchased the “4K” model and finding the experience far from ideal, and seeing similar compromises with the “8K,” I think there will be few of these showing up on Ebay. I have to hand it to Pimax though, since I plan discuss today why the XTAL is so damn expensive, while the Pimax is 1/10th its cost with similar specifications. Love to hear other opinions on this as well.

    • dogbite

      What would those “similar compromises” be?

      • Refresh rate and the limitations of DP 1.4 and the graphics card that support it. This was same issue that Pimax had with their “4K” HMD, that could only achieve 4K at 3840 x 2160 at 24-30 fps due to only supporting HMDI 1.4. If you remember the first “8K” prototype had cable for two video ports.

        I also fear that if the lenses are Fresnel in nature this will provide an inferior visual experience as well. The XTAL claims NOT to use Fresnel lenses which in my own design experience, a good achromatic doublet PMMA lens is far sharper. I would not mind the extra cost of a lens capable even if added a $100 to the price. I fear due to the wide FOV, this has created some unique lens design challenges that can only be done with Fresnel design. Sad, because the best part of the “4K” headset was the lenses*

        *These should fit in a HTC/Vive with little effort, but have not removed my HTC/Vive lenses to see how much of a adapter needs to be created to provide the proper FL offset.

        • dogbite

          Well DP 1.4 is the most bandwidth we have so unless you are suggesting they compromised by not using 2 cables to achieve 90Hz, I not sure where you go with that. Given so many have said they did not realize it was running at 80, I think I will accept the choice of a single cable as the better choice atm.
          As far as to whether a non-Fresnel lenses choice would have been better, without out a prototype using such a lense this too would seem to be much of the same conjecture the Pimax forum has been saturated with for months. No thanks. I’ll wait till we have facts from the testers at a minimum before drawing any conclusions on Pimax’s design choices.

          • You are right, whatever design compromises made by Pimax are okay if the buyer feels they are getting their monies worth. The problem with Pimax, is previous claims and the final product was very underwhelming. I hope that Pimax surprises us all and their product is decent. I for one feel any push to make the experience better, is great for the entire industry. They appear to be taking feedback very serious and working very hard to show they will have a good product for those that backed them.

          • Heliosurge

            Looks like he missed the spec page. The 8k is 2xQHD input (4kish). Its the 8k-X that is full dual UHD input.

            The pimax 4k was their first startup product. Had they Kickstarted the 4k it would have had a better refinements. Some Impulsed bought the product.

            I took over a month to find a more than unboxing review. I found a good one on Reddit that explained things well enough fir me to buy. I have not regreted buying it despite its many Flaws.

            Jan 2017 Ces Rd2VR.
            – 8k not ready for Primetime. But 4k impresses.

          • Ahhh, this explains the defensiveness in other post I have made. Since you own one, what impresses you about it? My positive were the great lenses, Sharp 4K panel, and decent build & fit. Negatives, no actual 4K mode above 30Hz, (but great for 4K 3D video content) as well as drifting IMU that was never corrected to my satisfaction. I also felt due to the 5.5″ screen and lens focal length, it allowed the edges of the left and right of the screen to be seen, destroying the immersive experience. Again not an issue if your use is for consuming 2K (per eye) video content. I shelved it for about a year & a half, but brought it out to test again a couple of weeks back and did not see any improvements with the latest PiPlay 2.07. (another area that a number of users complained about due to he poor English translation and instructions). Also, I am assuming your term “impulsed” means “impulse buyer” which you are using in derogatory term to reflect you had made an informed decision. I actually made several of the points I have made here, along with some positives that went past “unboxing” in my own reviews as an “Impulsed.”

          • Heliosurge

            Ghosting is still an issue. The 4k @30hz wasn’t able to be fixed as it needed 60hz compressed but without the needed support that is in Qualcomm & only recently put into DP 1.4 (well almost a year now) but as I am sure you know hdmi vr headsets don’t like adapters. Ghosting still a big issue; if you load Unity Chan & press spacebar its not using any extra goodies like ATW or post processing. Crony has suggested overdriving the display may help with ghosting. Talk more later.

  • Andrew Jakobs

    Looking forward to seeing actual reviews of the Pimax, but I’ll bet i’ll be a while before we see any of them. Still no shiping date released.

  • WyrdestGeek

    It’s nice to see them making progress, even though their “8K” isn’t really 8K.

    When Linus Tech Tips reviewed them, he said maybe the name was aspirational. I loled.

  • Jonathan Pratte

    Wow so many people arguing about the name of the product. Just bring it on!

  • Justus Comon

    That’s… good news, but my advice is to DON’T get excited. Pimax is the master of saying something, without saying nothing. And that’s why:

    – we don’t know anything, besides, they have final prototype (as year ago…)

    – what mean ‘mass production’? 10 000 units? 1000? 100?

    – we talking just about HMD. What about entire bundle (= working product) – controllers, base stations, working software? From what we know, controllers are estimated on q2 2019 (?) – so real working product in ‘mass production’ will be when…? 2020?

    – we don’t know ANYTHING about real consumer impressions with whis device, so..

    I would advise careful curiosity, rather than excitement, to not repeat other kickstarter mistakes.

    • Farrison Hord

      “Mass Production” in this case means about 5000 units, to the Kickstarters backers. Then they will focus on consumer mass production. They are already well underway with the first thousands right now, so the backers will probably have their units after summer, or early Q4 at the latest.

      The reason they haven’t specified a release date now is because they have delayed it three or four times already. Instead of falsely promising a new date, they are working to iron out the kinks and update the tracking, working on the controllers without the public stress of keeping the deadline. They are being quite transparent about this on their forum, if you’d like confirmation on this.

      I also like to advise caution when it comes to Kickstarter products, as there are plenty of lemons to go around, but from what even the early test prototypes have shown, and what trusted reviewers have said(like Linus), this seems to already knock the other VR competitors out of the park with it’s FOV. It’s just been rough around the edges on the smoothness and motion tracking (which they have already promised that they’ve fixed). Kickstarter backers know by now to not expect too much though, I think. And I’m going to wait for the beta testers’ reviews and most likely first wave consumer reviews before considering a purchase, but this has me more excited than I ever was for Vive, looking at what you get for the price listed.

  • theonlyrealconan

    The confusion and arguments is amazing here today. Hope this helps:

    It is not 8k (8k is 4k times 4, this is “4k” per eye/so 4k times two).
    It is not even native 4k (it is 1440 upscaled to 4k per eye).

    It IS two 4k screens, but the signal that we are getting is NOT 4k. Is is 2k (1440) upscaled per eye. I am not sure if they did this because GPU’s cannot handle native 4k right now at the frames we need for VR or because they wanted to cut costs.

    It is 1440, upscaled to 4k per eye, yet the screens are 4k. When they say 4k per eye, they are not telling you it is native. So when people say they are not being honest, it is not only about the “8k”. It is also about the “4k”.

  • Yoshi Kato

    While I’m excited about this product, I think it was a bit stupid to name the device 8k. If it can deliver on the 200 degree FOV along with high resolution, it already has an industry leading product. They could have simply named the product the “Pimax Super Mega Ultra VR headset” and people would have focused on the actual specs of the headset (which are still pretty good).

    Now, even if the headset turns out to be great, people will be calling them out on the “8k” aspect of the name for the life of the device. This isn’t the TV industry. The current VR enthusiast are bit more informed than a normal person who purchases a “960hz” TV.

  • There are a lot of questions about “8K” but the most important one is what does it take to run a 7680 x 2160 bit-stream. I have attached a partial screen capture from a Wikipedia page on the DisplayPort standard, and it makes more sense to push 3840 x 2160 at 160 fps with interleaved frames for each eye, than continuous 7680 x 21560 frame at 80 fps. If it is the former, than you are hard pressed to continue saying this is an 8K display when in fact it is not even at bit-stream level.

    My problem with Pimax is they have always worked off of (& marketed) what is theoretically possible, instead of what practical from an engineering and consumer end -product perspective. The other thing I would worry about will it be submitted to a testing lab for RF radiation for FCC approval (US) since the you are looking at some fairly high frequencies, as well as intentional 5.4 GHz radiation. This process normally takes 4-8 weeks after lab completed testing.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DisplayPort https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7a7acf0f305b4b0e8f18de393f6ef29810796d93c5c9138fc15949adbd7d32ab.png

    • Caven

      The Pimax 8K won’t accept a 7680×2160 bitstream. The plan is to take a lower resolution signal and upscale it for the 4K displays in the headset. That’s what the still in development Pimax 8K X is supposed to be able to do, though they’ve stated it may require dual video cards to do it.

  • DC
    • Andrew McEvoy

      It’s working fine though?

      • DC

        It was offline for an entire day following this article.

        • Andrew McEvoy

          I see. Must have been a minor issue as its up now.

  • They’re going into mass market production but don’t have a delivery date… uhm..

    • Farrison Hord

      Not mass market production yet. It’s the mass production phase, which is distinctly different. It simply means that they have solved all the issues surrounding the design and technical aspects of the product and are now ready to mass produce the first 5000 to their Kickstarter backers. After that, they will start the actual mass production for the consumer market. Realistically, we’re looking at a late Q4, maybe early 2019 consumer release date.

      The reason they haven’t got a date is because they’ve already delayed it multiple times. They did have a delivery date that they had to back out of to fix the issues they were having with the lenses, and then thoroughly test the product, so they most likely don’t want to jump the gun again and promise yet another date in case of any unforeseen delays. Don’t worry though, as soon as the first 5000 are shipped, they will most likely specify a date that is very close.

  • Sion12

    I wonder if there will me a mid gen upgrade when HDMI 2.1 comes out

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Now you can look like a Weirdo wearing this`8K` yeah……

  • Kenji Fujimori

    Nothing good the Chinese can do but LIES

  • NooYawker

    Anyone who’s interested this guy who reviews VR games on youtube is actually one of the ten beta testers. I haven’t watched it yet but here’s alink

    EDIT: NVM, he’s under NDA and can’t say anything about it. He just talks alot of nonsense. But I left link in case you really want to see.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=627Bi2LrfvM

  • Aleksej Shashkov

    Road to VR are still beating dead horse. Why they think that every VR headset should have 16:9 aspect ratio, is beyond any reason. 16:9 was significant improvement over 4:3 for TV, but for wide FOV VR HMD it is not good at all. Probably 32:9 is still not good enough. In 10 years or so, when all VR devices will have wide FOV with accordingly wide aspect ratios, everyone will simply laugh on idea of 16:9 aspect ratio for VR HMD :)

  • Atanas Ctonlob

    Tall it a “True 4k VR headset”.. however to keep things in prospective, call the rift and the vive by their real pixels too.. aka 1080 x 1200 per eye which is over 6 times lower resolution than the Pimax 8k per eye..

  • Thanks for sharing this information. 8K VR is brand new technology nowadays. Integrate on LCD panels is best part.